MSI Z170I Pro Gaming AC Motherboard Review

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Conclusion

MSI have set a very good example in producing good quality, feature packed, but not so wallet crushing ITX solutions over the last couple of years; does the Z170I Pro Gaming AC give a case of the same positive vibes as previous boards?

I have to be quite blunt here and honest about the Z170I Pro Gaming AC ITX motherboard, there is certainly room for improvement in terms of performance as the board compared to other Z170 boards offers average performance at best. The best testing ground for this board via our benchmarking and testing was F1 2015 where it actually steamed ahead of the charts; the same can’t however be said about other benchmarks used today. One huge strong point for this particular type of board (ITX) is memory performance is generally good and bandwidth/latency performance was a real particular highlight for the Z170I Gaming Pro AC. This is usually due to the shorter track distance between the DIMM slots and the CPU socket themselves and although marginal and highly unlikely to be noticed in real world applications, extra performance is still extra performance!

That being said, it isn’t all doom and gloom and nothing that has been said points to this being a bad board, it’s actually an all-round solid board in terms of price, performance and features. It features plenty of connectivity and the 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports are a very welcomed bonus as these are more compatible than USB 3.1 Type C ports etc. M.2 drives up to 60mm in length are supported so although drives such as the new Samsung M.2 950 Pro aren’t compatible, it still does give users to use regular M.2 drives such as the Crucial MX200 and so forth. Overclocking potential is there and although each sample can differ in terms of performance, we feel that chips capable of 4.8-4.9GHz will happily sit at those speeds all day long and I would have no fears about any of the capacitors or MOSFETS crapping out; overclocking is of course done at your own risk and we cannot be held responsible for burnt out phases or damaged hardware.

Focusing now on the aesthetics, the MSI Z170I Pro Gaming AC shines very highly in my opinion; MSI gaming boards tend to look great though! A particular highlight for me is the clean looking PCB and layout of key components such as audio components, Intel LAN chip and of course the tidily placed BIOS battery. I would say my key favourite is the all-black PCB with red technical track pattern which really looks the part and I feel other companies should take note of this type of design. The placement of 2 x SATA 6GB/s ports either side of the memory DIMM slots is a very welcomed addition to which does give you a slight choice in cable management; always a welcomed thing in a small form factored build.

The strongest point overall for the MSI Z170I Pro Gaming AC is the price; this board comes in at around £130 in the UK and $190 in the US.  This makes it around £50-60 cheaper than the ASUS Maximus VIII Impact which does make the point that the Pro Gaming AC represents decent value for money. The MSI Z170I Pro Gaming AC does have some very good features for the money too and also has a pretty reasonable showing in the audio performance department too; nothing new that we haven’t already seen before this chipset, but still good nevertheless. The main rival of the Pro Gaming AC is of course the ASUS Pro Gaming ITX board which doesn’t just have a very similar name, but the performance is pretty similar too; not necessarily a bad thing.

Overall for fans of the MSI gaming brand, the Z170I Pro Gaming AC motherboard is a bit of a no brainer for those planning on utilising the new Intel Skylake 14nm processors, although it isn’t much of an upgrade over Z97 (Socket LGA 1150) if we are honest about it. If you have £130 to splash out and need an ITX motherboard, you can’t really go wrong with the MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC and I’m happy to award this particular motherboard our Silver award.  Good job MSI and we look forward to seeing more in the not too distant future.